Merry
and Pippin were left on their own, wandering around the Ring of Orthanc,
looking for something to eat, and wondering what is going on away in Rohan, or
with the members of the Fellowship. Outside there is a great sound of thudding
and rattling: the Ents and Huorns are digging pits and trenches, gathering the
waters of the river Isen and what other streams and springs they can find. They
stayed out of sight of the gaping windows of Orthanc.
Treebeard
returned to them at last, stiff from his work. The Ents have moved more earth
and cracked more stone than they have for years. He warns the hobbits to stay
away from the gate and tunnel come nightfall; they will be releasing the waters
and they may get trapped. The old Ent begins amusing himself by tearing down a
little more wall.
Suddenly
they are startled to hear the approach of hoofbeats. Treebeard hides in the
shadow of the gates while the hobbits lie quiet. Then like a flash of silver a
great horse comes to the gate, and who to Pippin’s amazement should be riding
it was Gandalf, who he last saw plunging to his doom in Moria! He halts the
horse just by the hobbits.
‘Did
he say: “Hullo, Pippin! This is a pleasant surprise!”? No, indeed! He said:
“Get up, you tom-fool of a Took! Where, in the name of wonder, in all this ruin
is Treebeard? I want him. Quick!’
Treebeard
comes out of the shadows. He says he’s glad Gandalf is come, because there is
wizard to be handled, while Gandalf praises all that Treebeard’s done so far, but he
has ten thousand Orcs to handle. What surprises Pippin is that neither
seems to be surprised to see the other, even though Pippin told the old Ent
about Khazad-dum. Gandalf and Treebeard hurry aside for a private conference,
the wizard speaking very hastily indeed.
They
confer about fifteen minutes. When they are done, Gandalf seems relieved. He
finally tells Merry and Pippin he is glad to see them but has no time to fill
in the gaps since their parting. He does tell them a bit of news that worries
the hobbits, about the war that Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas seem to be caught
up in. Gandalf warns them to stay away from the tower and is off again like a
bolt of lightning.
Treebeard
looks thoughtfully at the hobbits and says maybe they are not quite so hasty as
he thought them. ‘You said much less than you might, and no more than you
should. Hm, this is a bundle of news and no mistake! Well, now Treebeard must
get busy again.’ He says little more, but enough to worry them about their
friends in the coming battle. ‘Huorns will help,’ Treebeard assures them, then
leaves them until the morning.
The
hobbits spend an uneasy night on top of a pile of stones. The ‘Huorn-dark’, a
mist or shadow, surrounds them, the air around them heavy and full of creaking
and whispers. They can see flashes of lightning far away lighting the mountains
in the south, and hear deep rumblings like thunder. About midnight, the Ents break
the dam and let all the waters into Isengard. The mists have cleared away and
the thunder rolled off. ‘The Moon was sinking behind the western mountains.’
The
ring of Isengard begins filling up with water. Sometimes it goes down into
dark shafts or spoutholes, and steams come hissing up and there are explosions
and gusts of fire ‘One great coil of vapour went whirling up, twisting round
and round Orthanc until it looked like a tall peak of cloud, fiery underneath
and moonlit above. And still more water
poured in, until at last Isengard looked like a huge flat saucepan, all
steaming and bubbling.’
Aragorn
remarks that they saw the smoke and steam in the night, and thought Saruman was
brewing up some devilry for them. ‘Not he!’ said Pippin. ‘He was probably choking
and not laughing anymore.’ The water
sank into all the holes, quenching the fires, then began rising at an alarming
rate. The hobbits had rather a fright when the water began coming into the
guardroom where they were watching. They scrambled to the roof and there
witnessed the drowning of Isengard.
Come
evening there was a rainbow over the hills, then a thick drizzle on the
mountainside. Wolves howled mournfully, far away. The Ents stop
the flow of water in the night.
Since
then, the water had been sinking. Isengard was a dreary mess. With not even a
visible Ent to talk to, and Saruman still penned in the tower, they spent a
cold damp night, uneasy and nervous. They hear a sound in the dark that seems
to be the Ents and the Huorns returning, though they’ve vanished now. ‘It was a
misty, moisty morning’ when they climbed down again, with no one around. And
that’s about it. It’s so peaceful, especially since Gandalf came back, that
Pippin feels like he could sleep.
Bits
and Bobs
Tom Fool: Some people have said that the phrase “Tom-fool” originated from Tom Skelton, the ‘fool’ or jester of Muncaster Castle, who is sometimes believed to have been the basis for the Fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear. But the phrase itself ‘starts appearing in the historical record early in the 1300s in the Latinate form Thomas fatuus’ or Fatuous (Foolish) Tom. A tom-fool is someone who is even more pronounced in their stupidity than an ordinary fool.
Misty Moisty Morning: The phrase is, of course, from the Mother Goose rhyme. According to Iona and Peter Opie’s The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, it is the adapted first verse of the 15 stanzas of the 1680 poem The Wiltshire Wedding. The first place I ever read it was here:
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